320 Acres Added To Lehigh Game Lands

About 320 acres of choice woodlands, good for hiking, hunting or bird watching, will be added to the state game lands in Lehigh County, the Lehigh Valley Wildlands Trust announced yesterday.

The land is on the east side of Route 309 as the road swings sharply west to cross over Blue Mountain in Lynn Township. It has direct access from Route 309.

The Wildlands Trust has signed an agreement to purchase the land from the Nitro-Chem Energy Corp. of Allentown, according to Charles Nehf Sr., chairman of the Wildlands Trust. To some people, the land may be known as the Trojan Powder tract, for it still contains the former company's old dynamite storage bunkers. However, a block of 80 acres containing the empty concrete bunkers is not part of the purchase, said Nehf.

The land adjoins and will be added to State Game Lands No. 217. The purchase is the latest of a series of land purchases or options totalling 1,661 acres that have been or will be added to State Game Lands No. 217. All the land is on the Blue Mountain in parts of Carbon, Lehigh and Schuylkill counties. Much of the land contains the Appalachian Trail and provides additional government protection to the famous walking trail and to two popular bird-watching and scenic knobs on top of the mountain.

As with the other land purchases, the Pennsylvanian Game Commission will pay most of the purchase price because the land is being added to the game lands that are owned and managed by the Commission.

Ninety acres of land on Blue Mountain in Berks County recently was preserved by the Commission and the Wildlands Trust Fund of Eastern Pennsylvania.

The wooded land is near the top of the south face of the mountain, just east of the Schuylkill River at Port Clinton, Schuylkill County.

A representative of the Berks County Federation of Sportsmen, Joseph Leiendecker, said the acquisition was important because it links two state game land parcels.

In the Nitro-Chem deal, the Game Commission will contribute $300 an acre and the Wildlands Trust will contribute $50 an acre to the $350-an-acre selling price. About 65 percent of the Wildlands Trust contribution comes from sportsmen's clubs in Lehigh County. The remainder has come from individuals and businesses, according to Nehf.

The Game Commission is considering putting a parking lot along Route 309 and cutting a fire service road from the parking lot eastwardalong the mountain to Bake Oven Knob, a popular bird watching and scenic spot.

The service road would not be open to vehicles but could be used by hikers, bird watchers and hunters.

The mountain is regarded as one of the major hawk and raptor flyways in the United States. The woodland is also home to grouse, turkey and deer, Nehf said, and would be open to public hunting as part of the state game lands.